Coco Gauff: From tennis Star to “Sex Appeal” Object? Is Arrogance and Controversy Replacing Her Skill?

adison Keys vs. Donna Vekic

How do two players who are close in age and generally close in ranking avoid playing each other for six years? The draw gods, clearly, work in mysterious ways. But they couldn’t keep Keys and Vekic apart any longer.

From 2016 to 2019, the American and the Croatian played three times; Keys won twice, before Vekic took the third, in a final-set tiebreaker, in Toronto in 2019.

More recently, each of these women has experienced a resurgence and a rise in the rankings. Vekic’s renaissance took her to the semifinals at Wimbledon and the gold medal match at the Olympics in 2024. This year, though, she has started just 5-7, and she lost three straight opening rounds coming to Indian Wells. That said, the 28-year-old hit with much more confidence in her straight-set win over Emma Navarro on Monday.

Keys surged in 2025, all the way to her first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open. She comes into this match 16-1 on the season. But she also showed signs that she may be coming back to earth in her close win over Elise Mertens on Monday. She needed six match points, and an extra set, to finish it. Clearly, winning a Slam doesn’t mean she’ll never be nervous again.

Keys will bring superior weaponry to this encounter, but Vekic is also a hard hitter with a reliable serve of her own. Maybe things have begun to turn in the right direction for, and the wrong direction for Keys, just enough to give Vekic an edge

Coco Gauff v. Belinda Bencic

This match features the third-ranked player in the world vs. the 58th-ranked player in the world, who just recently returned to the tour after having a daughter. Yet it kind of feels like a toss-up. That’s how smooth Bencic’s comeback has been so far.

The American and the Swiss have played three times, and Gauff has won twice. The most relevant of those wins came in January at the Australian Open, when she dropped the first set and cruised in the last two. Other than that, though, Bencic has had the better season so far. She’s 16-4, she won a title in Abu Dhabi, and she has beaten two seeds, Amanda Anisimova and Diana Shnaider, in Indian Wells. She was also a semifinalist here in 2019.

There’s little reason to think that Bencic will throw in a bad performance on Wednesday. With Gauff you don’t know. She was 0-2 in February, and she chucked in 21 double faults in her squeaker first-round win over Moyuka Uchijima over the weekend. Then she came out and played much better in a straight-set win over Maria Sakkari. Was that enough to get Coco’ season back on track? On these slow courts, with this crowd behind her, I’m going to say yes. Winner: Gauff